Customer Reviews

A Basic Course in Moroccan Arabic (Richard Slade Harrell Arabic Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book could be an excellent introduction to Moroccan Arabic, but it suffers from a few flaws. The main flaw is the author's method of transliteration (i.e. using English letters to represent Arabic letters). The method is rather confusing and not the one that is commonly used. If one did not already have a general knowledge of the Arabic language, its sounds and even some vocabulary, one would be at a loss to make sense of the transliteration (i.e. using an "z" to represent the Arabic equivalent of "j" and other oddities). However, once you've deciphered the rather odd transliteration, the book is rather useful. Even though written in 1965, the basics of the Moroccan dialect are well represented in the text, even though it might be called a more formal Moroccan dialect than the one generally heard. My suggestion to anyone wanting to learn any dialect of the Arabic language is to first learn to read and write the Arabic script. That way you don't have to waste your time learning different methods of transliteration. As it stands now, I don't know of a major text dealing with Moroccan Arabic for English speakers that uses Arabic script, so this book seems to be the best for now. I suggest getting it if you need it, but you might need a Moroccan to help you with the transliteration at the beginning. The book mentions that cassette tapes are also available that go along with the text, so they might help also.

the format used of drills for pronunciation is boring and the subject matters of the exercises are not relevant to today's Morocco. Outdated language is used much to the hilarity of my husband's family who are educated Moroccans. Examples of sentences taught are " I gave the rifles to the judge" and "she hit the dog". It's useful for the basics and the grammer but the choice of vocabulary taught means that whilst I know how to construct a sentence, I don't have the vocab! It has inspired me to learn Moroccan and then write a book for English speakers.

This book is very useful. Although it uses linguistic signs for pronunciation instead of Arabic signs it is still accessible. Being a teacher, I was really able to evaluate the ods used in this book. I have found the exercices easy to follow. The level of difficulty is progressive allowing you to master what you have learned previously before learning more. Being French Canadian, I would have preferred to have a Moroccan-French book. But this is the best one I have found in North America.

This "course" is simply a reprint of an old Georgetown book from the 60s. It is garbage. The text is not in Arabic script (which is ridiculous) and the "exercises" are useless, but the vocab could be a good start if some of the words were not outdated and the author had explained which were Moroccan, Standard Arabic, French, or Spanish. The recordings, although insightfully encoded into MP3 format, are of the worst quality. They are clearly copies from tapes from back in the 60s when this book was useful. It sounds like they were recorded in a bathroom by someone who had smoked three packs of Winstons a day for 25 years. It was a decent language book for its time, but this is 2005. LET'S GET SOME NEW BOOKS GEORGETOWN!!! If that institution is such a bastion of Arabic studies in America, then I challenge it to get off its ass and put something out there (besides al-Kitab). This stuff is IMPORTANT these days. We Arabic students NEED it.

This is the only complete Moroccan Arabic book (in English at least) that I have found out there. I am about half way through the book and CD's. I know I am on my way to fluency because everything that I have learned thus far I am able to both speak and understand. The other small Moroccan Arabic books out there are useless if you truly want to become fluent. I guess they may be useful if you are planning a trip to Morocco and need to learn a few phrases to find the toilets, etc. If you are in a touristy area in Morocco then you could just use French. I highly recommend the book and CDs if you are serious about learning Moroccan. I am grateful that this is available. Otherwise, I believe that learning Moroccan Arabic would be nearly impossible.

I studied this book with the MP3 audio files during my lunch breaks. The short lessons (around 5 minutes of audio, plus the reading and exercises) meant that I could do a lesson each day and feel like I was getting somewhere.

This book teaches the language from an academic, grammar-based standpoint, not the situation-based lessons you will find in most language courses written for tourists. As others have mentioned, some of the vocabulary is outdated, it does not use the Arabic alphabet, and explains things in grammatical terms that I am not familiar with (I'm no linguist). However, I still found it usable since each lesson made a grammatical point, explained it, and showed several examples on the audio, so I picked it up by example.

There does not appear to be any other detailed resource for learning Moroccan Arabic. There are travel phrasebooks and their audio equivalent, that's about it. That fact alone makes this course worth the 4 stars I gave it.

I found it rewarding to work through this book, and check in on the phrasebooks from time to time, to see if the phrases made more sense (and they did!). Also by combining the practical vocabulary found in the phrase books with the sentence structures in this book, I can say a whole lot more than I find in either book.

There is a section of conversations in the back, for which there is no audio. I wish there was audio available for those, as that would make that section more useful.

If you are serious about learning Moroccan Arabic and understanding it, I recommend this book. If you want to quickly learn some conversational skills because you are planning a visit, this is not the book for you. It would be easier to learn some French, and you would be understood equally well.

This book could be an excellent introduction to Moroccan Arabic, but it suffers from a few flaws. The main flaw is the author's rather odd method of transliteration (i.e. using English letters to represent Arabic script). His method is rather confusing and differs from the one that is more commonly used when dealing with Arabic. If one does not already have a general knowledge of the Arabic language, its sounds, and even some vocabulary, one would be at a loss to make sense of the transliteration (i.e. using an "z" to represent the Arabic equivalent of "j" and other such oddities). However, once you've learned how to decipher the cryptic transliteration, the book can be rather useful.

Although written in 1965, the basics of the Moroccan dialect are well represented in the text, albeit in what might be called a more formal version of the dialect than one generally hears on the streets or in daily conversations. The book introduces the basics of Moroccan Arabic, both grammar and vocabulary, in a logical and progressive manner over the course of 130 short lessons. Each lesson essentially contains a short text, which is followed up by grammatical notes, exercises and vocabulary. The second part of the book contains ninety-seven dialogues that are presented in transliteration along with their English translations. Whenever I take a look at this text, it seems I get the feeling that this could really be an excellent book if it weren't for the irksome transliteration. In my mind, that just won't go away...

On that note, my heartfelt suggestion to anyone wanting to learn any dialect of the Arabic language is to first learn to read and write the Arabic script. That way you won't have to waste your time learning different methods of transliteration, which often lead to incorrect pronunciation anyway. Keep in mind that learning to read Arabic is not like learning to read Chinese or Japanese, with their thousands of characters, since the Arabic alphabet only contains twenty-eight letters. While it certainly looks rather confusing at first, especially since the letters connect to one other, with some practice and determination most people, regardless of their background, can pick it up rather quickly. Unfortunately, as it stands now, I don't know of a major text dealing specifically with Moroccan Arabic for English speakers that uses Arabic script, so the book under review seems to be about all there is for now. However, although it's rather slim and doesn't really set out to teach the language in detail, the 'Lonely Planet Moroccan Arabic Phrasebook' does use both Arabic script and transliteration, so those who can read Arabic might find it more useful, although it certainly doesn't offer the same depth of coverage as the text in question.

Overall, I would suggest getting this book if you really need a text specific to Moroccan Arabic, but keep in mind that you might need a Moroccan to help you with the pronunciation and transliteration at the beginning. The book mentions that cassette tapes (and now MP3 files) are also available to go along with the text, so I'd certainly consider those in order to learn correct pronunciation...especially since the cryptic transliteration that this book used certainly isn't going to help in that regard.